Cycling Madagascar

After contacting 3 travel agents about airfare to Madagascar, and only getting a response from one quoting an extortionate price, we were starting to get pretty fed up. Who wants to hand over $3000 to a lady who needs a week to make one phone call? I was almost resigned to navigating the scary world of layovers and cargo fees online… but not just yet.

So while strolling through Kensington at lunchtime on a nice winter day, we decided there was no harm in stopping by Travel Cuts to see if they could help. After all, with three useless travel agencies under our belt, what was the harm of one more?

It turned out to be the the second-best decision we’ve made so far (the first being, of course, the decision to go to Madagascar). Malcolm at Travel Cuts spent half an hour typing away, and we walked out of there with a flight itinerary, a quote of $2700, and a whole lot of weight off our shoulders.

As it stands, we’ll leave Calgary on May 6th, fly to Montreal, from Montreal to Paris, from Paris to Antananarivo (Tana), and we’ll arrive in Toamasina at 8:30 in the morning on May 8th. How we’re going to ensure that our bikes make it onto all the same flights we do is enough to give me a serious headache, but that will come later I guess.

There are a few things to take care of in the next few days before the flights are offically booked: insurance, International Student Identity Cards, actually producing the cold hard cash. Hopefully by Thursday, everything will be official!